JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
in exhibitions beside "alarmingly clean Parisian canvases, he felt like a man with muddy shoes in a drawing-room." To console himself for these untruthful works he studied the workman types of Paris and the country round Paris, and prefaced his great rustic pictures by The Winnower in 1848.
Finally he broke sharply with all fashionable art and in 1849 gave himself up definitely to studying the country. Into this pursuit he threw himself with enthusiastic ardour. Every day during the early part of his residence at Barbizon, and sometimes in a couple of hours, he would paint a rustic scene; and in a letter to Sensier dated 1849 he says that he has five pictures finished and three more in hand. The first Sower of 1850 was painted in so furious an impulse that Millet presently found his canvas too short and had to repaint the figure, tracing the outline. The works of this first Barbizon period are distinguished by their violence and heavy execution. Gautier who, speaking of the Winnower, had pointed out to Millet, as early as 1848, the thickness of his impasto, says that all these canvases are "as rugged as shagreen leather."
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